Underwater Wireless Laser-Based Communications Using Optical Phased Array Antennas

Abstract

An underwater optical wireless communication system concept based on optical phased array antennas is presented. With this optical phased array, a laser beam can be electronically steered to adjust not only the azimuth and elevation angles, but also the beamwidth.The proposed concept simplifies pointing and acquisition challenges between non-aligned transceivers. The performance (in terms of the trade-off between achievable range, bit error rate, and data rate) is explored for different numbers of antenna elements and water types. Also, a suitable scanning method is suggested.

Keywords

• Laser applications
• optical phased array
• pointing and acquisition
• underwater optical wireless communication